CHAPTER SEVEN
The Bedel
“Your pardon, luthia.” Isart was breathless with haste, his voice louder than necessary.
“Pulka bade me tell you that Rys is come back to us by the Eighth Gate, and brings his brother with him.”
Silain the luthia looked up from her mending and gave the lad a smile.
“You have done well, Grandson,” she said, and the boy’s bony face flushed with pleasure. “Go back to Pulka, now. Rys will bring his brother to me by the path he was taught.”
“Yes, Grandmother.” Isart was gone on that instant, feet pounding.
Silain folded her mending away into the basket beside her, adjusted her shawl, and folded her hands upon her lap. Rys would be some few moments yet, the Eighth Gate being somewhat more remote than other of the kompani’s gates.
She had time enough, to pray.
“Grandmother, good morning,” Rys said softly.
Silain raised her head, and found him before her, handsome in his finery, his dark curls wind-tousled and sparkling, here and there, with captured droplets. And if that finery which became him so well at the height of his young manhood had blessed Udari as a boy, what matter that?
Behind Rys’s right shoulder stood a man slightly taller, though by no means so tall as Udari. His hair was dark also—brown, rather than black—also jeweled with moisture. He wore a black leather jacket with the collar turned up ’round his ears. His face, thus framed, was grave and thin.
“Rys, my child. Who do you bring to my hearth?”
He gestured very slightly with the hand that Rafin had made for him, and the other stood forward, moving with sweet, silent grace.
“Grandmother, here is my brother, Val Con yos’Phelium Clan Korval, of whom we have spoken. Brother, here is Grandmother Silain, the luthia.”
Val Con yos’Phelium bowed, supple as a sapling. Straightening, he looked boldly into her eyes. His were green. “Grandmother Silain, I am pleased to meet you.”
“Brother of Rys, be welcome at my hearth,” she replied, which was more formal than her usual style. She saw the side of his mouth twitch toward a smile, as if he knew it.
“Val Con comes to dream,” Rys continued, “in the safety of the luthia’s tent and heart.”
“If you please,” the other added, eyes smiling at her from beneath long lashes, the rogue. “I do not, under Tree, have the proper reading equipment to hand. Pulka, the brother of my brother, was kind enough to send an adapter that he believed would function, but I thought it best to seek equipment that was known to behave as it ought.”
“I am pleased to guard a dreamer’s rest,” Silain said. She considered him, and added, “You are wary. That is wise, for I will tell you that this dream Rys has made is cruel, nor has he flinched from the worst of it. Know that the dream cannot harm you; but it may be—and in this instance, I say, will be—hard to bear. I will watch, and ensure that you are safe.”
“I am grateful to the grandmother for her care,” he said softly. “In pursuit of my duty as a pilot, I am sometimes required to fly what we call sims, which allow me to fully experience the flights of other pilots, in order to note either error or excellence. My brother Rys would describe this dreaming as something very much like a sim.” He bowed his head slightly.
“Flying a sim may also be distressing, for not every pilot survives their error.”
“You are prepared, then. Will you drink tea before dreaming, Val Con, brother of Rys?”
“Grandmother, acquit me of discourtesy, but I think tea only if it will ease my way into the dream.”
“In fact, tea after dreaming may be best,” Rys said.
“I bow to my brother’s wisdom,” Val Con said, and looked again to Silain. “There is another thing that you should know, Grandmother. My lady has said that, should I not survive this . . .”
“Harebrained stunt,” Rys murmured.
His brother smiled. “Indeed. Should I not survive what she feels to be an ill-advised and unnecessary adventure, she has claimed Rys in Balance.”
Silain sat up straighter. She had heard tales of the headwoman of the People of the Tree. She was a warrior so ferocious the Yxtrang revered her as a hero; a lover so skilled that she had captured the heart and hoard of a Dragon; a woman who gave her word but rarely, and always kept her promises.
It was that last which concerned Silain; after all, there were irresistible lovers and fiery warriors in plenty among the Bedel. But promise-keeping, that was dangerous.
“She will take your life?” she asked Rys.
“Grandmother, so she said.”
“And you agreed to this?”
“Yes.” The face he showed her was unafraid, yet Silain felt a shiver, as if the breeze from tomorrow had stroked her cheek.
“Unless he is inexcusably clumsy,” Val Con murmured, “it is doubtful that she will murder him. My lady has a gift for making use of people, waking talents they barely knew they encompassed, and pushing them into extraordinary action. Very likely, she will only make him into what was lost.”
Now was Rys alarmed, too long after agreeing to the headwoman’s bargain. His hand gleamed when he moved it, as if pushing the words away.
“I am not fit to be Korval!” he protested.
His brother caught the gleaming hand and held it gently, one dark brow out of line with the other, and a half-smile on his generous mouth.
“If it comes to that, neither am I, fit to be Korval,” he murmured.
Silain shook her head.
“If you have agreed to this, Grandson, then it will be done, and the Lady of the Tree will make of you what she will.”
“Yes,” Rys said again. “But Val Con will return to his lady.”
Despite what she had said, in order to ease his natural qualms, dreams did sometimes kill. Especially such dreams as this one. And it was true that dreams would sometimes open old, or mis-healed wounds.
Silain extended her hand then, imperious. He who would dream released Rys and turned to meet her eyes.
“Grandmother?”
“Your hand,” she said.
Cool fingers met hers and she saw it, clearly, the damage that had been done. It was a pattern well known to her; she need only extend her other hand to Rys to see its twin. Someone skilled had taken up the healing of him, and done their work well; he was strong and whole, and if there remained a flaw, it was too small for her old eyes to detect. She was about to release him, when she caught a glimmer of living color, on the very edge of her Sight.
Color? Or flame? She averted her Sight, much as one might avert the outward eyes, in order to see some ghostly thing more clearly. The colors intensified, flowing into an arc. A whisper of melody tickled her Inner Ear.
“A bridge of flame and music springs from inside your soul,” she murmured, barely hearing her own voice. “What is the name of the one you are linked to?”
There was a hesitation; she felt him weigh the need to disclose his secrets—and felt him understand that this secret had already been breached.
“Miri. My lifemate. But,” he said, his voice taking on an edge of worry, “she agreed to shield herself from this.”
“The base of the bridge where it springs from your soul is at the far limit of my Sight. I think I am only able to see it because I hold your hand. Your lifemate may have kept her word, young dreamer, but shielding against such passion as I am able to see would be like drawing a cobweb over a bonfire.”
“She has assistance,” he said, and she felt that he attempted not only to answer her, but to soothe himself. “My sister and her lifemate are skilled in these matters.”
“Well, then,” she said softly, “it will fall out as it does.”
She released him, patting his cheek as if she comforted a child, before turning to Rys.
“You will do well,” she told him, feeling the weight of her words. And truly, it was unlikely that the man who had survived even the healing of such wounds would die of Rys’s dream.
“I believe that I understand the risk,” Rys’s brother said quietly. “I do not come to this unarmed, or naïve. I have, indeed, some knowledge of horror.”
“So I have seen. It will be as it will be, my children. Are you ready to dream?”
“As much as I may be. I would have it done quickly.”
She nodded. Rys offered his natural hand, and she accepted his help, rising a little stiffly, and beckoned them toward her tent.
Val Con tucked himself, birdlike, into a nest of blankets smelling not of smoke, as he had expected, but of flowers. When he pronounced himself comfortable, the grandmother bent over him, a crown of flexible golden mesh held between her hands, and settled it upon his head.
He closed his eyes, and extended himself in that way which was perfectly natural, and utterly indescribable, questing after the lifemate link, the complex music of Miri’s soul.
His questing met only a damp coolness, like fog.
Excellent, he told himself. She is shielded.
In the normal way of things, they did not hide themselves from each other. But this—there was real danger here; he knew it, and he had pressed her hard, until she had agreed to accept assistance, and remain shielded until he returned to her. That . . . was not to his credit, but he would not, for his life, expose her to any portion of a sim reflecting what it was, to be one of the agents of the Department of the Interior.
“Attend me,” Silain said, and he opened his eyes to look up into her face.
“First,” she said, “there will be a tone. This tone will put you into a deep sleep. Once asleep, you will dream. You may wake from the dream at any time, or I will wake you, if you seem to me to have become dangerously distressed. Do you understand these things, Val Con, brother of Rys?”
“Grandmother, I do.”
He breathed in, breathed out, and brought to mind the Rainbow, the calming and centering exercise that is the very first thing taught to novice Scouts.
“Yes,” he heard Silain murmur, as if she had seen the colors whirl and lock. “Excellent. Use what tools you have.”
He felt her touch on his hair, lightly, perhaps being certain of the connections; heard the rustle of cloth as she reached to the device—and abruptly felt himself short of breath.
“Brother,” he said suddenly. He freed his arm from the blankets. “Your hand, if you will honor me.”
“Of course, Brother.” Rys dropped to his knees by the cot, and clasped him firmly with his own, natural, hand. “You are safe with me.”
Bold words. Would that he felt so bold, of a sudden.
“Are you ready, Val Con?” asked the luthia.
“Grandmother, I am as ready as ever I will be.”
He took a deep, deliberate breath.
Somewhere, a chime sounded, bright and hard.